What is VisualCron?

Job and Tasks

A Job is a placeholder for one or more Tasks. A Task could be the “Execute Task” which starts any script or application or the “SQL Task” which executes a query in a remote database.

You can schedule execution of Jobs based on time or event. For example, you can tell VisualCron to run something each Sunday at 3AM or when a file has been created in a network share.

When a Job is being run, manually or by schedule, it will start one or more Tasks in that Job. VisualCron has a Task for every situation. Currently, about 120 Tasks exist.

Why should I schedule and automate?

Time is a very valuable asset within a company. By automating something you can save time as you are converting a manual process to automatic. By doing this you let your employees focus on the result of the task rather than doing the task. Also, what is associated with manual work is that it is very error prone. Automation reduces the human factor to a high degree.

As data and load on internal servers constantly increases one of the advantages with scheduled automation is that you can schedule a Job to run at low peak times which will not, in the same way, affect production. If the low peak is at 4AM at night it would also be hard to have the employee run this Job manually at that time.

By automating you can focus on the result and what to do with it. For example, if a Job has ran at night maybe you want to know if everything went alright. This type of information can be sent further to any user, by email for example.

What should I schedule and automate?

Some believe that this tool is only for the IT-department. Yes, maybe the IT-department should administer this tool, but no, there is no reason for just automating tasks for the IT-department.

All departments within a company perform manual or half-manual tasks. By analyzing what takes time and what people do a lot of time can be saved.

These are the most popular things to automate;

script and executable execution

file handling (copy/backup/delete/read/write)

archiving files with compression (zip/7zip etc.)

SQL queries

DTS/SSIS execution

FTP/SFTP transfer

HTTP download/upload

PGP encryption/decryption

Cloud file handling (Azure, Amazon, Google Drive, SkyDrive)

XML - reading and extracting info from XML files

sending email

Sharepoint automation

printing

Standards and integration

What also makes VisualCron an integration tool are two things;

Common protocols

Common formats

Independent of if you are using Linux or Windows there are a couple of standards for;

transferring information and files

encrypting files

archiving files

signing files

VisualCron follows these standards so you can easily integrate with other computers - which could be a Linux computer.

Monitor and overview

With VisualCron you get a quick overview of current situation. It can quickly answer you this for example;

When will Job A run next time?

What was the result of Job B?

How long time did Job C take to execute?

What output did Task A in Job B have?

Who created Job A? How modified Job B?

Which date and time did Job A run the last 30 days?

All this information is updated in real time within VisualCron. There is no refresh button - you get to know exactly when it happens.

Remote control

The VisualCron Client is used for monitoring and configuring. The Client can connect remotely to the VisualCron service. That means that you can establish a secure connection over Internet or in your local network between Client and Server - all with real time updates.

Custom integration with your tools and applications

VisualCron can easily be integrated with your system - if you request a deeper and closer integration. We have provided a programming interface so you can tell VisualCron what to do at any time and also extract any information from VisualCron.

What is special about VisualCron?

Easy of use - VisualCron is easy to configure and maintain.

Real time - every information you see in the Client is delivered in real time.

Advanced features - if you need specific control, VisualCron gives you that with settings on a very low level for each Task.

Community driven development - at VisualCron we base future versions on feature requests from our customers.

Fast support - we will be able to help you quickly through email, Skype, screen sharing and phone.

Updates - we release a new version about once a month. If we, for any reason find a problem with an existing version we release a fix within days.

Custom development - if you have very special requests about features in VisualCron we can develop for you. We also offer development outside of VisualCron.

Pricing - affordable one time and optionally yearly maintenance cost

Pricing and and support

VisualCron offer an affordable per server license model. The cost is a one time cost per server. Optionally we offer a yearly maintenance fee. The yearly fee gives you the right to upgrade to any major or minor version that is released within a year - also it gives you priority support (normal support is limited to our forum). Licenses are sold including or excluding the first year of maintenance.